what’s so bad about reading some Harry Potter fanfic in the polycule?
Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
71–80 of 329 posts
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#72What is one or two rapes or sexual assaults against trillions of future lives? With sufficient future sight and the power of the exponent > 1, one can justify many present actions. Sadly, the EAs are small thinkers. True grand scale actions require truly grand visions https://cosmicbraintrust.org/
what an evil and disgusting comment.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#73AI safety is an apocalypse cult and we should recognize that everyone who has ever been in an apocalypse cult thinks that "no, this time it's really the end of the world". Everyone who believes crazy shit thinks they're being reasonable, so just because we're super sure we're being reasonable doesn't mean what we believe isn't crazy. Do we believe that we alone, of all people who have believed in the coming end, have…
Personally, I find the AI safety arguments sound pretty far-fetched, but I can’t come up with solid arguments against them. Also, when I look for a good ”debunking”, I don’t find anything. Mostly all I find are mockery, ad-hominem and the like. Frankly, the people who argue climate change isn’t real do a better job than the people who argue AI risk isn’t real, and they’re wrong!
> but I can’t come up with solid arguments against them.
Let chaos take the world! /s
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#74AI safety is an apocalypse cult and we should recognize that everyone who has ever been in an apocalypse cult thinks that "no, this time it's really the end of the world". Everyone who believes crazy shit thinks they're being reasonable, so just because we're super sure we're being reasonable doesn't mean what we believe isn't crazy. Do we believe that we alone, of all people who have believed in the coming end, have…
Personally, I find the AI safety arguments sound pretty far-fetched, but I can’t come up with solid arguments against them. Also, when I look for a good ”debunking”, I don’t find anything. Mostly all I find are mockery, ad-hominem and the like. Frankly, the people who argue climate change isn’t real do a better job than the people who argue AI risk isn’t real, and they’re wrong!
Yeah, I can't really argue against the whole idea. My "P(doom)"(language from the article), at least as related to agentic AI, is pretty low. About 7 or 8 percent before I die, and I'm not really old. There's probably not a lot I could do about it anyway, given that most AI jobs are alleged to just make it worse. That said, I can't really go around telling people with different numbers they should be working on antiviral research or physical manufacturing, just because I (personally, without their massive and cohesive "evidence" (i.e. gamed out scenarios) bases) think that's more important.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
There have been people for a long time who think the world is going to end. We can use your argument to dismiss anyone who fears any existential risk like asteroids, nuclear war, climate change, AI, etc... And since the world exists every group will be wrong except one. I think the risk of human extermination is much lower than many in this group believe because I think AI is much more compute bound than algorithm bo…
The issue is that the effective altruism crowd are focused exclusively on AI safety, at least in what they publish online. If they talked about all possible threats to humanity and how to solve them, from AI, to climate change, to nuclear bombs, to asteroids, to disease, they would be an interesting and important group. They don't. They hardly talk about anything else except AI. From the outside it looks a lot like a…
You might want to get familiar with what effective altruism actually focuses on.
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-e...
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JmmA2Mf5GrY9D6nQD/four-focus...
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/best-charities-to-donate-to-...
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
There have been people for a long time who think the world is going to end. We can use your argument to dismiss anyone who fears any existential risk like asteroids, nuclear war, climate change, AI, etc... And since the world exists every group will be wrong except one. I think the risk of human extermination is much lower than many in this group believe because I think AI is much more compute bound than algorithm bo…
The issue is that the effective altruism crowd are focused exclusively on AI safety, at least in what they publish online. If they talked about all possible threats to humanity and how to solve them, from AI, to climate change, to nuclear bombs, to asteroids, to disease, they would be an interesting and important group. They don't. They hardly talk about anything else except AI. From the outside it looks a lot like a…
I think they're worried about it because they honestly do care about existential risk. If you can come up with some more likely existential threats than AI, I'm sure they'll worry about that too.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too didn't finish it - assuming it's "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". I got caught up by the multiple times the main character made sweeping assessments of things with insufficient information, and just happened to be right by accident (or author fiat I guess). The main characters figure things out by Thinking Really Hard, and experimentation is only ever done to prove they were right all along to oth…
It went above your head.
Nah, HPMOR just sucks, plain and simple. There was no need for a HP fanfiction in the first place. Also, if you ever ask anyone that reads fanfiction, no one will ever have a positive opinion of HPMOR. There are millions of HP fanfics, and there are many that are much better than HPMOR. My guess is that it was set in the HP universe just so it could be popular.
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#78I was not aware that there is an Atlas Shrugged-length Harry Potter fanfiction about rationality. Learn something new every day!
It's not just Atlas Shrugged-length, but Atlas Shrugged-quality!
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#79AI safety is an apocalypse cult and we should recognize that everyone who has ever been in an apocalypse cult thinks that "no, this time it's really the end of the world". Everyone who believes crazy shit thinks they're being reasonable, so just because we're super sure we're being reasonable doesn't mean what we believe isn't crazy. Do we believe that we alone, of all people who have believed in the coming end, have…
"Apocalypse cults are always wrong, AI safety is an apocalypse cult, therefore it is (probably) wrong" is an argument which really only betrays the ignorance of the speaker regarding the specifics of the AI doomer argument. Why are apocalypse cults always wrong? Do the same specific reasons apply to the doomers here?
Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior
#80This article is such a mess. If you are alleging something, then say it clearly. Judging by my participation in lesswrong and others, there are both feminists and sexist people, just like all other online forums. People are more free to be sexist online and every close knit online community has fair share of sexists.
The EA people seem to have more than a spurious relationship with polygamy, drugs, orgies and odd-ball ascetic leader figures, doomsday prophecies and psychotic behavior. Taken from the article
" MIRI employee Jessica Taylor had a job that sometimes involved “imagining extreme AI torture scenarios,” as she described it in a post on LessWrong—the worst possible suffering AI might be able to inflict on people. At work, she says, she and a small team of researchers believed “we might make God, but we might mess up and destroy everything.” In 2017 she was hospitalized for three weeks with delusions that she was “intrinsically evil” and “had destroyed significant parts of the world with my demonic powers,”"
This is like what, one bad week away from AI Jonestown? At some point this isn't a community but a cult, and women usually tend to draw the shortest sticks in any cult environemnt with bizarre moneyed, male leader figures.